The essence of the plan, or programme, of what is called
“cultural-national” autonomy (or: “the establishment of institutions
that will guarantee freedom of national development”) is separate
schools for each nationality.

The more often all avowed and tacit nationalists (including the
Bundists) attempt to obscure this fact the more we must insist on it.

Every nation, irrespective of place of domicile of its individual
members (irrespective of territory, hence the term “extra-territorial”
autonomy) is a united officially recognised association conducting
national-cultural affairs. The most important of these affairs is
education. The determination of the composition of the nations by allowing
every citizen to register freely, irrespective of place of domicile, as
belonging to any national association, ensures absolute precision and
absolute consistency in segregating the schools according to nationality.

Is such a division, be it asked, permissible from the point of view of
democracy in general, and from the point of view of the interests of the
proletarian class struggle in particular?

A clear grasp of the essence of the “cultural-national autonomy”
programme is sufficient to enable one to reply without hesitation—it is
absolutely impermissible.

As long as different nations live in a single state they are bound to
one another by millions and thousands of millions of economic, legal and
social bonds. How can education be extricated from these bonds? Can it be
“taken out of the jurisdiction” of the state, to quote the Bund formula,
classical in its striking absurdity? If the various nations living in a
single state are bound by economic ties, then any attempt to divide them
permanently in “cultural” and particularly educational matters would be
absurd and reactionary. On the contrary, efforts should be made to
unite the nations in educational matters, so that the schools
should be a preparation for what is actually done in real life. At the
present time we see that the different nations are unequal in the rights
they possess and in their level of development. Under these circumstances,
segregating the schools accord lug to nationality would actually
and inevitably worsen the conditions of the more backward
nations. In the Southern, former slave States of America, Negro children
are still segregated in separate schools, whereas in the North, white and
Negro children attend the same schools. In Russia a plan was recently
proposed for the “nationalisation of Jewish schools”, i.e., the
segregation of Jewish children from the children of other nationalities in
separate schools. It is needless to add that this plan originated in the
most reactionary, Purishkevich circles.

One cannot be a democrat and at the same time advocate the principle of
segregating the schools according to nationality. Note: we are arguing at
present from the general democratic (i.e., bourgeois-democratic) point of
view.

From the point of view of the proletarian class struggle we must oppose
segregating the schools according to nationality far more emphatically. Who
does not know that the capitalists of all the nations in a given state are
most closely and intimately united in joint-stock companies, cartels and
trusts, in manufacturers’ associations, etc., which are directed
against the workers irrespective of their nationality? Who does
not know that in any capitalist undertaking—from huge works,
mines and factories and commercial enterprises down to capitalist
farms—we always, without exception, see a larger variety of
nationalities among the workers than in remote, peaceful and sleepy
villages?

The urban workers, who are best acquainted with developed capitalism
and perceive more profoundly the psychology of the class struggle—their
whole life teaches them or they perhaps imbibe it with their mothers’
milk—such workers instinctively and inevitably realise that segregating
the schools according to nationality is not only a harm jut
scheme, but a downright fraudulent swindle on the part of the
capitalists. The workers can be split up, divided and
weakened by the advocacy of such an idea, and still more by the
segregation, of the ordinary peoples’ schools according to nationality;
while the capitalists, whose children are well provided with rich private
schools and specially engaged tutors, cannot in any way be
threatened by any division or weakening through “cultural-national
autonomy”.

As a matter of fact, “cultural-national autonomy”, i.e., the
absolutely pure and consistent segregating of education according to
nationality, was invented not by the capitalists (for the time
being they resort to cruder methods to divide the workers) but by the
opportunist, philistine intelligentsia of Austria. There is not a
trace of this brilliantly philistine and brilliantly nationalist idea
in any of the democratic West-European countries with mixed
populations. This idea of the despairing petty bourgeois could arise only
in Eastern Europe, in backward, feudal, clerical, bureaucratic Austria,
where all public and political life is hampered by wretched, petty
squabbling (worse still:
cursing and brawling) over the question of languages. Since cat and dog
can’t agree, let us at least segregate all the nations once and for all
absolutely clearly and consistently in “national curias” for educational
purposes!—such is the psychology that engendered this foolish idea of
“cultural-national autonomy”. The proletariat, which is conscious of and
cherishes its internationalism, will never accept this nonsense of refined
nationalism.

It is no accident that in Russia this idea of “cultural-national
autonomy” was accepted only by all the Jewish bourgeois parties,
then (in 1907) by the conference of the petty-bourgeois
Left-Narodnik parties of different nationalities, and lastly by the
petty-bourgeois, opportunist elements of the near-Marxist groups,
i.e., the Bundists and the liquidators (the latter were even too timid to
do so straightforwardly and definitely). It is no accident that in the
State Duma only the semi-liquidator Chkhenkeli, who is infected
with nationalism, and the petty-bourgeois Kerensky, spoke in favour of
“cultural-national autonomy”.

In general, it is quite funny to read the liquidator and Bundist
references to Austria on this question. First of all, why should the most
backward of the multinational countries be taken as the model? Why
not take the most advanced? This is very much in the style of the bad
Russian liberals, the Cadets, who for models of a constitution turn mainly
to such backward countries as Prussia and Austria, and not to advanced
countries like France, Switzerland and America!

Secondly, after taking the Austrian model, the Russian nationalist
philistines, i.e., the Bundists, liquidators, Left Narodniks, and so forth,
have themselves changed it for the worse. In this country it is
the Bundists (plus all the Jewish bourgeois parties, in whose wake
the Bundists follow without always realising it) that mainly and primarily
use this plan for “cultural-national autonomy” in their propaganda and
agitation; and yet in Austria, the country where this idea of
“cultural-national autonomy” originated, Otto Bauer, the father of the
idea, devoted a special chapter of his book top roving that
“cultural-national autonomy” cannot be applied to the Jews!

This proves more conclusively than lengthy speeches how inconsistent
Otto Bauer is and how little he believes in his own idea, for he excludes
the only extra-territorial (not having its own territory) nation
from his plan for extra-territorial national autonomy.

This shows how Bundists borrow old-fashioned plans from
Europe, multiply the mistakes of Europe tenfold and “develop” them to the
point of absurdity.

The fact is—and this is the third point—that at their congress in
Br\"unn (in 1899) the Austrian Social-Democrats rejected the
programme of “cultural-national autonomy” that was proposed to them. They
merely adopted a compromise in the form of a proposal for a union of the
nationally delimited regions of the country. This compromise did
not provide either for extra-territoriality or for segregating
education according to nationality. In accordance with this compromise, in
the most advanced (capitalistically) populated centres, towns, factory and
mining districts, large country estates, etc., there are no
separate schools for each nationality!

The Russian working class has been combating this reactionary,
pernicious, petty-bourgeois nationalist idea of “cultural-national
autonomy”, and will continue to do so.